baby led weaning - 2 questions

[sky44]

Hi! Background: I have a bottle refusing almost 7 month old baby who also resisted spoon feeding (except if it was a fruit puree or fromage frais...!). I also did finger food from 6 months and hhave now abadoned all spoon feeding as I was worried she was getting more sweet stuff than savoury (as she only took the latter if she picked it up herself). So we are now full on BLW and I think she has about 7 breast feeds a day.

My questions are to you BLW experts:

1. When did your babies eat good enough amounts of food to drop their breast feeds? My worry is I go back to work (3 days a week) when she will be just 11 mths and it worries me that she doesn't take a bottle so could get dehydrated and she might not be able to compensate with lots of food if she still isn't getting much food through the hatch! I would prefer the nursery let her do BLW and I have heard the nursery are fans of BLW luckily so this is less of a concern.

2. How the heck did you do yoghurt? I put some in a bowl and let her dip her hands in, is that OK

Thank you!

sky44 DD was mostly happy with no daytime milk feeds when DP wasn't around in the day from about 9 months, and had most even when DP was around by 11 months. She was certainly drinking water long before then and don't think you should worry about dehydration. Start offering cups or straw beakers already.

yoghurt - yep little bowl (I think they were "weaning pots" with lids that we were given that just get used as containers and bowls now) and offering her a spoon she can use to dip or ready loaded by us.

Brother Max do lovely little 'travel' spoons - I load it with yogurt and my DS grabs the spoon from me. It generally reaches his mouth...
Another option is to thicken it with ground flaxseed or something.

If he will drink from a sippy cup he could have milk from there - not that mine will but he's surviving so far. If he won't have milk during the day he may compensate when you are around.

We started blw at six months and for what seemed like a long time it was playing and nibbling, then having a bottle straight away to complete the meal.

Only recently, two months on, have the meals fully replaced milk feeds, so, with 2+ hour gaps, we're doing milk-breakfast-milk-lunch-milk-tea-milk-bed-milk. I hope to drop the night-time milk soon. We offer a sippy cup of water with meals and she now drinks well from it, with help.

We do yoghurt and porridge on spoons and hand them to her. They used to go upside down and everywhere and I did despair a bit but she's decided she likes them and got much better at getting them into her mouth. I'd sometimes guide them once she'd taken hold but that's less necessary now. She will give / let me take them back but also loves throwing them on the floor, where they stay. I use 3-4 per meal.